Is it too late to wish you all a Happy New Year? Probably, but it’s been ages since I last wrote a blog and it feels only right to do so. Because, in Formula 1 terms, after two weeks of launches and the start of testing today, the new year and the new season finally feels like it’s getting underway.

A new and improved Formula 1? Well that’s the hope of course, and there’s plenty of hope and expectancy at the moment that the 2017 season won’t be dominated by one team and their two drivers.

Certainly we have a new look to the cars and, for some teams, new colours to those new look cars too. Even the sport itself has new people at the helm, controlling the commercial side and making new promises for the future.

The launches have been eagerly anticipated and that anticipation has turned into plenty of debate as to which cars look the best, which look the fastest, and on Friday, whether it was the old Arrows or the Marussia that proved the inspiration for McLaren’s new colour scheme? For the record and in answer to the many tweets I’ve had on the subject of the new livery, I don’t dislike it, it’s a colour scheme after all. The important thing is whether the car is more competitive than it has been for the last couple of seasons. With Ron Dennis no longer at the helm though it was important for the team to park that era in the past and I like the fact that they turned to the original Bruce McLaren livery as inspiration. But the end result does rather look like a compromise of the toughest of the dozen people that Zac Brown said were involved in the decision.